Chapter 15 JULIAN
JULIAN
I’m mostly healed. That’s what Kai said yesterday when he yanked the bandage off my thigh like he was peeling a sticker.
“No more painkillers,” he’d added, so casually it felt like being shoved off a cliff.
No more blessed numbness. No more slow-pouring warmth taking the edge off.
Just me. A walking nerve ending with too much space inside my skin and too many memories tearing through it like claws.
Rafe’s fingers should’ve helped—should’ve taken the edge off for more than one night—but instead all they did was wake something up.
Something hungry. Something stupid. Something that won’t shut the hell up no matter how hard I try to bury it under sweat and pacing and pretending I’m fine.
I can still feel where he touched me—low, deep, sharper than any needle Kai’s ever held—and now that the pain is gone?
I’m left with the quiet. And the quiet is worse.
The quiet lets everything crawl back in.
Nathan’s voice. Nathan’s hands. Nathan’s fucking smirk.
I need out of my own head. I need the fog back. I need anything other than this.
So I end up at Kai’s door, practically vibrating out of my skin, one hand braced against the metal to keep myself upright while the other trembles like I’m freezing.
I knock once, twice, then harder, because I cannot—physically cannot—wait politely like a functioning person. My thigh is healed. My mind isn’t.
Kai opens the door on the third hit, leaning in the frame like he already knew exactly who’d be here.
He looks me over with that surgical boredom he does so well, eyes drifting down my twitchy fingers, the sweat at my hairline, the way I keep shifting on my feet like standing in place might kill me.
He exhales a slow, unimpressed sigh, and I want to scream just to hear something break.
“Feeling restless, pretty boy?” he asks, voice soft, amused, cruel in that clinical way that makes you feel stupid for bleeding.
I push past him because he always lets me, and then I’m in the container—no, the clinic—white walls, steel counters, too clean and too sharp for someone like me.
I’m pacing before the door finishes closing.
“Kai, please—” I start, but the words scrape out wrong, needy and ugly. “I need—fuck—I need something.”
Kai doesn’t move. Doesn’t even bother pretending to be sympathetic.
He just watches me like I’m a lab rat that finally figured out which lever to press.
“What exactly is it you need?” he asks, and the question lands hot and humiliating in my throat.
I clench my jaw and keep pacing because if I stop, I’ll break.
“You know what,” I spit, but it’s thin and weak and he hears it. He always hears it.
Kai tilts his head, slow and precise. “No. I want you to say it.” He’s behind me before I even register the steps, fingers curling around my jaw, not rough, not gentle—just firm enough to hold me in place as he forces my eyes up to meet his.
His gaze is calm. Patient. Deadly. “Tell me what you’re trying to drown today. ”
My breath stutters. My throat burns. I try to twist away but his grip tightens just a fraction and my body betrays me, leaning into the anchor without meaning to. “I—I can’t think,” I whisper, hating how it cracks.
“Good,” Kai murmurs, leaning in closer. “What thought hurts so much you’re clawing at my door like a stray?”
The silence stretches until it feels like a blade. And then something inside me snaps. “I want to stop fucking remembering,” I choke out. “I want to stop missing… him.”
Kai doesn’t blink. His thumb strokes once over my jaw, more diagnostic than comforting. “And?” he murmurs.
The extra word cuts deeper than any accusation.
I breathe hard through my teeth, hating him, hating myself more.
“I want to be wanted again,” I whisper, voice collapsing on itself.
“Just… for five fucking minutes. I want to stop feeling like a mistake someone abandoned.” The truth hangs there between us, intimate and filthy and exposed, and I feel skinless saying it.
Kai nods once, slow and satisfied, as if he’s been waiting for exactly that confession to slot something into place. “There we go,” he says softly. “Now we treat the symptom. Sit.”
I sit. Immediately. Obediently. Pathetically.
My legs fold under me without argument as I drop onto the metal exam chair, breathing hard, hands twisting in my lap like they belong to someone else.
Kai turns away, opens a drawer, and for a moment all I hear is the soft click of glass vials tapping gently together.
My mouth waters. My heartbeat stutters. Every instinct in my body leans forward in desperation.
He draws something up into the syringe and turns back toward me with the same expression he’d wear before cutting someone open. “Neck or arm?” he asks.
I swallow. “Arm.”
“Good boy.”
The phrase shouldn’t hit me like a punch to the gut, but it does. He folds my sleeve up, takes my arm, and the needle slides in with a sting that feels like resurrection.
The high hits fast—too fast—and my head tips back against the chair as the room shifts warm around the edges, my limbs going heavy and slow and blissfully quiet. Kai keeps a hand on my face for a moment, his thumb brushing my cheekbone like he’s checking reflexes, not offering comfort.
“Breathe,” he murmurs.
I do. Deep. Shuddering. Grateful. Shamefully grateful.
My eyes close without permission and my body sinks into the chair, melting into the burn, the hush, the sweet silence eating away the noise in my skull.
I feel the world tilt—slow, sweet, drowsy—and maybe I tip sideways, maybe onto Kai’s shoulder, or maybe he nudges me that way so I don’t slide to the floor.
Hard to tell. Hard to care. Everything’s soft.
Everything’s fading. Everything is gone except the quiet.
But the last thing my brain clings to, floating and warm and half-dead, is not silence. Not the drug. Not Nathan. Not the fucking tape. It’s Rafe. His voice. His breath. His hands. His threat-soft promises in the dark.
I wanted numbness. But he’s still there. In every quiet place I hide.
Luca is suddenly just… there. Or maybe he’s been there the whole time and my brain is too syrup-thick to register movement.
Either way, I walk straight into him—face first into his stupidly perfect chest—and bounce off like a drunk pigeon hitting a window.
He catches my elbow, not kindly, more like he’s grabbing merchandise he doesn’t want scuffed.
“Steady, golden boy,” Luca purrs, lashes low, smile slow and poisonous. “You look delightfully wrecked. Kai treat you well?”
I blink at him. Hard. Once. Twice. Then again, because there are two Lucas standing in front of me and they’re both smirking. “Why are there two of you,” I mutter, leaning a little too much into the wall because the floor is doing a wave-motion thing that absolutely shouldn’t be legal.
Luca tilts his head, pouting in exaggerated sympathy. “Poor baby. Can’t walk straight without your fix?” He clicks his tongue. “Kai really should teach you moderation.”
And then he leans in closer—too close—until I’m breathing in warm skin and expensive soap and the faint metallic scent of blood dried under his nails.
“Tell me something,” he whispers, voice sweet. “Are you playing with my daddy?”
I blink again. Real slow. I try to line up the two copies of him until they overlap. It almost works. “Your who?” I ask, because the words don’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. My brain is a fucking carousel and Luca is the horse that won’t stop spinning.
Luca scoffs like I’m the dumbest thing he’s smelled all week. “Daddy, pretty boy. Doctor Death.” His smile widens, sharp. “Kai. Mine.”
I stare at him. Then at the hallway. Then at him again.“…You call Kai Daddy?” I ask, because surely—even in my state—that’s the more important question.
His eyes narrow. “Obviously.” Then he presses one manicured finger to my chin, tilting my head up. “But you? You crawling into his container? You kneeling at his feet? That’s my game, sweetheart. I don’t share.”
I snort. Or try to snort. It comes out more like a stumbling laugh caught in molasses. “I wasn’t—”My brain stutters. Reboots.“—not like that.”
Luca looks me over, slowly, like he’s assessing damage. Or competition. “Mhm. Funny. You smell like his drugs.” His hand drops from my chin to my chest, tapping once over my sternum. “And his disappointment.”
I try to swat his hand away. I miss. Completely. Probably hit air. Or one of the duplicate Lucas. “Go away,” I mumble, which is pathetic even to my own ears.
“Oh, absolutely not.” Luca steps forward, forcing me back against the wall.
His smile is pretty enough to kill someone.
“See, junkie, I like my chaos controlled. Mine. And you—” he drags his finger down the center of my chest, slow enough to raise goosebumps I can’t deny— “you’re fucking with the ecosystem. ”
“I didn’t do anything,” I protest, but it comes out slurred and soft. “Kai just—he just helped. That’s it.”
Luca laughs, a bright, delighted sound that somehow feels like being stabbed with glitter. “And you think he helps for free?” he says, tapping my cheek with two fingers. “Everyone here belongs to someone. You might want to pick carefully.”
My stomach flips and the hallway tilts again.
Then—like a thunderclap—footsteps.
Heavy. Purposeful. Familiar.
Luca’s eyes flick past me toward the sound, and his grin turns wicked. “Speaking of ownership…”
A shadow falls over us. A presence. A gravity that makes the air shift.
I don’t even need to turn around to know.
Rafe.
And I am very high, still leaning against Luca, still smelling like Kai’s drugs and shame.
Perfect.
Rafe’s voice hits the hallway like a gunshot made of gravel and hell. “KAI! Get your feral dog off my feral dog!”